What is there to look forward to in the cinema this summer? What am I looking forward to in the cinema this summer?

Well, as I've just spent seven weeks in hospital, my longest period for more than half a century without visiting the movies, I'm just longing for the lights to go down and the images, any images, to come up on the screen.

I've got some catching up to do - not a lot but some. I've got to see the new Chabrol Merci pour le chocolat (aka Nightcap) because you must to keep up with what remains of les petits maîtres, and I have an opinion on Pearl Harbor, which surprisingly attracted little comparison with Tora! Tora! Tora! and From Here to Eternity.

Actually, I do have an opinion on nearly all the movies I've missed, based on a process of triangulation created by the great James Agee who would form a firm opinion of any movie he'd missed from the reviews of any three leading critics with predictable opinions.

Anyway, what is there to look forward to before the arrival of Harry Potter in the early autumn? And what does 'looking forward to' really mean?

There is a general agreement that the greatest ever year for popular cinema was 1939, with the December premiere of the hugely-anticipated Gone With the Wind. That year there was also Gunga Din, Stagecoach, Ninotchka and The Wizard of Oz from Hollywood, Goodbye Mr Chips and The Four Feathers from Britain, Le Jour se lève and La Règle du jeu from France, most of them unanticipated delights.

Having missed Cannes for the first time since the 1970s, I'm eagerly anticipating Baz Luhrman's Moulin Rouge, though his cinema is a trifle coarse for me, and I'm more anxious to see the quieter pleasures of the new Mike Leigh and Ken Loach pictures, which are likely to be snapped up by Venice in September.

Ever since I saw Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets in 1973, I have been excited at the prospect of a new Scorsese film, but it seems like his period crime film, Gangs of New York, has been held up once more by trouble at Rome's Cinecittà. Not that Scorsese seems to be breaking fresh ground, but then neither do many others.

The most promising new British director Christopher Nolan (Following and Memento) has remade the Norwegian thriller Insomnia in Canada starring Al Pacino with Steven Soderbergh producing. Meanwhile, we await Scary Movie 2, Rush Hour 2, Terminator 3, Dr Dolittle 2, American Pie 2, Crocodile Dundee in LA, and remakes of Rollerball and The Four Feathers.

The one truly original picture I look forward to is A.I. (Artificial Intelligence), a long-cherished Stanley Kubrick project based on an SF story by Brian Aldiss and featuring Haley Joel Osmond from The Sixth Sense and Jude Law.

Steven Spielberg took it over from the ailing Kubrick partly as an act of filial piety and it has been produced under conditions of considerable secrecy and is accompanied by internet promotion of immense sophistication.

This movie links key members of two generations of moviemaking and should be the talking point of the late summer, if not the year.

Go and see

Shrek Clever animated comedy in the Toy Story mould. The spoof fairytale concerns a disagreeable ogre (voiced by Mike Myers) who is persuaded to embark on a quest for an imprisoned princess (opens 29 Jun)